【推荐1】JIANLI, Hubei Province, June 2 (Xinhua) — A cruise ship carrying more than 450 people sank in the Yangtze River overnight, which could be China’s worst sinking disaster in decades. As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, 14 people had been rescued from the capsized vessel, with five others confirmed dead. The rest are still missing, although rescuers said there could be more survivors. Strong winds and heavy rain are hampering rescue efforts.

The Eastern Star sank in only 15 meters of water “within one or two minutes” of being caught in freak weather in Jianli, according to the ship’s captain and chief engineer who survived the incident. The ship left the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing on May 28 bound for Chongqing Municipality.

The ship was carrying 403 passengers, five tour guides, and 46 crew, rather than the previously reported 47. Most passengers were tourists from Shanghai and its neighboring province of Jiangsu, aged between 3 and 83, with most in their 60s and 70s.

The 76.5-meter-long and 11-meter-wide vessel has been in service for nearly 20 years and can carry up to 534 people. It is owned by Chongqing Dongfang Shipping. Waterway officials said they have no record of the company being involved in any previous sinking incidents.

According to weather forecast, most of the Yangtze basin will be subject to downpours over the next 10 days, with heavy rain expected in the area where the search is underway.

Police, waterway authorities and fire departments have sent more than 150 boats and over 4,000 personnel to the scene. The Chinese Navy has sent diving forces to search for the missing. The team is composed of soldiers from the navy’s fleets in the North Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea, as well as students of the Naval University of Engineering. In addition, five helicopters were dispatched from Beijing and Hubei’s provincial capital of Wuhan on Tuesday morning, along with an IL-76 transport plane.

【推荐2】Washington’s reported plan to announce new limits on China’s access to US chip technology will severely disturb the global semiconductor sector (半导体行业), which has already been struggling with risks of division in the COVID-19 pandemic, experts said on Thursday. Their comments came after Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the US Commerce Department is expected to put forward a series of rules this week governing which semiconductor technologies can be exported to China.

Bai Ming, deputy director of international market research at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said the reported move would be part of a broader push by Washington, to cut China off from the rest of the world in chip supply chains. He also added that it is a move that would be unrealistic and have painful results. “Such an attempt will strike not just US chip companies, but the global semiconductor industrial chain too. Recent years, China has become the biggest chip market and it has growing influence in semiconductor manufacturing,” Bai said. “Those moves would harm global chip companies, which count on China to make a profit,” said Pan Helin, co-director of Zhejiang University’s International Business School.

The Chinese mainland imports more than $300 billion of semiconductors annually, and most, though not all, major US semiconductor companies get at least 25 percent of their sales from the Chinese mainland market, according to an article by Christopher Thomas on the Brookings Institution’s website. “Access to this big market is essential to the success of any globally competitive chip firm today and in the future. A cooperation between China and the US is beneficial to the world.” The Semiconductor Industry Association, a Washington-based group, said in a report.

Zhong Xinlong, a senior consultant at the Beijing-based China Center, said such limits will motivate Chinese companies to achieve breakthroughs. In 2015, the US government blocked Intel from supplying its high-end processors to China’s supercomputer builders. Under the pressure, Chinese researchers came up with self-developed processors a year later, Zhong said.

【推荐3】When no one else was able to save a drowning (溺水的) 34-year-old man, a boy weighing only 80 pounds quickly became his hero.

11-year-old Adam was hanging out at the pool of his apartment building with his family when the man sank (下沉) to the bottom of the deep end, his arms spread out and his eyes wide from eight feet down in the water.

Surprisingly, Adam was the only one at the pool who could swim at the time. Before his family had moved to St. Paul, Minnesota three years ago, his parents had never had the ability to take swimming lessons. Luckily, they believed that Adam should have a few swimming lessons. “Some survival skills are a must,” his father said.

When trouble struck in the pool, however, Adam’s father had tried to help the man from a swim ring, but he couldn’t reach the man’s hand. Then, Adam jumped into the pool.

Despite the man weighing almost 100 pounds heavier than the boy, Adam successfully managed to pull the man up to the surface and get him out of the pool. Though Adam’s uncle had never received CPR training, he started CPR on the man based on what he had seen in movies and television.

A few minutes later, the man started to move his hands. Doctors then arrived and took the man to the hospital where he has since made a full recovery (恢复). The man stopped by the boy’s house later the very same week to thank him for saving his life.

“It’s simply wonderful,” said Adam’s uncle. “If he had not been there, I don’t know. I’m sure it would not be a happy ending.” Adam’s father also says that he plans on taking swimming lessons with his son in the near future.